As Brazil’s Internet Bill of Rights Nears Reality, Service Providers Could Face New Rules

Brazil could soon pass its Internet bill of rights, known as Marco Civil da Internet, which has provisions to enforce net neutrality, protect users’ freedom of expression, and provide privacy to Brazilian citizens – no matter where the service provider is located.

After Edward Snowden leaked documents that showed the massive extent of US and global surveillance, President Rousseff has emerged as a vocal critic of foreign espionage on citizens, especially the 100 million internet users in her country.

Previous drafts of the Marco Civil required companies that collect data on Brazilian citizens to store that data on servers in Brazil. However, tech giants including Google and Facebook successfully lobbied legislators to make amendments that wouldn’t require them and others to build data centers in Brazil to continue to provide services to Brazilians.

As it stands, Brazil plans to penalize rulebreakers with fines of up to 10 percent of the firm’s Brazilian revenues, or by blocking their services altogether.

The Marco Civil obliges internet application providers to act in an organized, professional manner, and to keep records of application access logs in a safe place for six months (and a minimum of one year for internet connection providers). These records can be accessed by authorities only through specific court orders, however, as many have noted, any internet service, in effect, could be affected by Brazilian law as long as it has Brazilian users.